Seminars

CommNetS - Electrical Engineering Communication, Networks and Systems Research Seminar
Organizers: Rahul Jain, Ashutosh Nayyar
Sponsored: Spring 2011 - present

The Communications, Networks and Systems seminar has been running since Spring 2010. It has been sponsored by the Ming Hsieh Institute since Spring 2011. It is a weekly seminar that takes place every Wednesday, 2-3pm in EEB-248, and brings together faculty and students in communications, networks and controls (and sometimes signal processing and electro-physics as well) with common interests.

One of the goals has been to expose students in various areas to work in other areas, e.g., communications Ph.D. students know very little about research in controls, and vice-versa. Many faculty found this a very worthy goal, and encouraged us to make this into a research seminar course, in which Ph.D. students (particularly when in their first year) and some MS students, can enroll. The registered students are asked to submit seminar summaries. The seminars, though are open to all. They have usually been very well-attended over the course of the last one year. This seminar series ensure that first year Ph.D. students and the enrolled MS students get a good exposure to research, including research in other areas as well.

The funding from the Ming Hsieh Institute has enabled CommNetS to sustain this as a weekly seminar course with a fixed schedule. Earlier, it had been relying on visitors who happen to be in the LA area, or who can take care of their travel expenses themselves, to come give talks, in addition to local and internal speakers. However, the funds have now given flexibility of inviting and hosting high quality speakers from outside the LA are as well.

CommNetS seminars are very well attended and have targeted some very high quality speakers, that ordinarily would not be able to have in the seminar series since there are only four annual department colloquium talks, in addition to the Viterbi and Munushian keynote lectures.

To reiterate, the goal for this seminar series has been (i) to bring together faculty, postdocs and students in different areas/divisions but with common interests together, (ii) expose students to research in diverse areas, as well as to accomplished speakers, and (iii) to establish the CommNetS seminar series to be well known outside as well. We intend to continue running this seminar series, and hope to make it a permanent seminar series in the department.

Upcoming Seminars